Interview with Troy Koglin

Written by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media

Troy Koglin came into my life as a graphic design client when Australia first went into lockdown and I started doing free artwork for bands as a way of A) assuaging my guilt at having a job when everyone else was out of work, and B) staying sane. The project was called CHEAP COFFINS, and we settled on the double-C logo design back in April. Now, almost five months later, the first single Liminal Self is about to be unleashed.

Based in Wollongong, Troy has been a musician since his days aping TENACIOUS D with his mates in high school. In 2020, he is marching to the beat of his own MIDI drum, cultivating a hard-edged industrial sound while answering to no-one but himself. CHEAP COFFINS is a vivid moniker dripping with goth credentials. Where did it come from?

“It was from a book that my daughter was reading. David Walliams was the author. I forget what the book was called, but it was a pretty dark story, like a lot of those ones are, where the kid was orphaned, and was living with his horrible uncle and auntie … There was a part in there where it said something about the parents who were killed off to get their fortune, and there was a line in there that said something like, “They were buried in a pair of cheap coffins.” It just stuck out as a very poignant phrase, that for all the worry and effort and suffering that we put into life, it very easily can end in a pair of cheap coffins.”

The imagery with the deer – what inspired it?

“That came about from an artist, Stefan Skjoedt … That was the first time that the project began to be a little bit more than me working out of the music room downstairs. It feels significant enough to actually spend some money on some artwork … [His artwork] just captured something of the same feeling I had when I first heard “Cheap Coffins” – that concept of something that was bigger than life itself … There’s something in the forest, and there’s something weird, and it’s standing there looking like it’s expecting you.”

Liminal Self hisses and crackles through a mesh of distortion – urgent drums, weighty synthesiser and enormous, anthemic vocals. “If God is dead, who do I thank for his suicide?” Koglin shouts into the void, and it’s not hard to imagine future crowds shouting back in rapturous response. Surging, fist-pumping industrial, CHEAP COFFINS’ debut single is an exhilarating statement of intent.

“The vocals and guitars are all recorded live, and I’ve got a MIDI drum pad and a MIDI keyboard and stuff, and other parts I’ll program through Ableton and whatnot. Some of them were ideas I wrote with the old band that never got used and have evolved … I was talking to my old school friend Neil Foley, who’s a brilliant producer … He brought a lot to it, even just little ideas. The first version of Liminal Self that I had was far more ambient and clean, and he had this idea of, “Let’s make this last chorus really heavy – put in some distorted guitars and kick-arse drums.” It worked so well, and it totally changed how I heard the song.”

What are some of his biggest influences?

“Number one is NINE INCH NAILS, for sure. I think a lot of [my influences] are people who have gone solo.” TOOL and DEFTONES also get a mention. “More recently, with the new project, I have been looking at people who have done things a certain way … Thom Yorke, Maynard with his PUSCIFER stuff, and obviously Trent with NINE INCH NAILS. There’s a band called LONG HOURS, which is Julian from I AM DUCKEYE from down in Melbourne … He just manages to make this chaotic, so entertaining, so engrossing, so cathartic live set … It’s lo-fi, just him and a drum machine and a guitar. Just seeing how he’s been able to pour his creative outlet through that – see these people do it themselves – made me realise that I don’t have to be beholden to scheduling issues, and the fact that, pitch-wise, I’m not a good singer. These aren’t necessarily deal-breakers for being able to find some creative outlet.”

Another artist Koglin holds in high regard is Tristian Shone, a mechanical engineer based in San Diego who makes crushing industrial music as AUTHOR & PUNISHER. “Everything he does is MIDI-loop stuff. He’s literally built these machines that look like industrial, mechanised sort of stuff, that he controls.” Resembling a factory worker at the controls of a cryptic, sinister machine, Shone screams and plays keyboards while ramming a handgrip back and forth on a steel rail. “[It’s actually] a MIDI trigger, and it’s got a little stylus on the end that will run over different tracks, and he’s incorporated that into some sort of translation software that will turn it into inputs through Ableton or some sort of software. So, he’ll play synths or he’ll play drums by slamming this big mechanical thing back and forward. Just being able to see the way that he has used a different setup to do the same sort of things – synth, bass, drums and vocals – in this entertaining, engrossing way.”

Shone’s unique talents saw him supporting TOOL on their most recent tour, and he left an indelible impression on Troy. “It inspired me to go, “OK, there’s ways around the problems that I’m having.” AUTHOR & PUNISHER was the most physically I’ve ever felt sound before. It’s so sub- and bass-heavy, the effects of it … your eyeballs were shaking. It felt like you were swimming. You could actually feel the sound frequencies.”

COVID aside, are there any plans to perform this stuff live? “Yes, definitely. It’s always been about the live side of stuff. I never wanted this to just be a bedroom project … I want to have songs onstage that I can perform, and in a perfect world, [I would have] people who know the lyrics and would come to see a show and sing along with it … So I’ve started putting the live set together, figuring out how to actually do it, because it’ll be just me onstage as a one-man show. So it’s been this really interesting process of having the whole song, getting the individual stems back from Neil, and then taking out the vocals, taking out the guitars so I can play them live, and stripping away as much as I possibly can, so I’m playing stuff live and figuring out which parts I can loop, and which parts I can sneakily record while another part is going on, so it can get looped later on in the song … Then, whatever left over is just physically impossible for me to do, so Ableton will take care of the rest.”

I mention that I can foresee him having a full band onstage with him (preferably caked in mud, like NINE INCH NAILS at Woodstock ’94.)

“The only reason that isn’t the way I want to go about it is just the organisation of getting that many people involved. I’ve got a lot of friends who are great musos. It’s so close to happening, and we even tried with the old band to get some live drums in, but just trying to get the scheduling to happen really put the brakes on and took the fun out of it. The greatest difficulty was organisation … I would love to do it Trent-style and be able to get in a band of kick-arse musos to make it all happen live, but until then I’ve got Ableton to take care of me.”

Marshalling people can be difficult, but Troy should be able to manage – he is a high school teacher after all. “I know right? It’s so much easier with kids. They’re in a room for an hour, they’ve got nowhere else to go, they’re legally obligated to be there, and if they’re not, you can call parents and wrangle them in … it’s so much easier. If I could do it the same with my friends, it’d be much easier – “Right, Timmy, sit down here! Be here next Tuesday!”

He mentions that he teaches science. Any plans for a Breaking Bad-inspired life of crime? “That’s Plan C,” he tells me with a laugh. “If the music career doesn’t work out, and I get bad news from the doctor, it’s straight to the chem lab.”

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